


Stalking Arthur

by Aviss



Series: Family [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:38:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aviss/pseuds/Aviss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It goes like this: Arthur has a secret, and Eames is nothing if not curious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stalking Arthur

**Stalking Arthur**

It goes like this: Arthur has a secret, and Eames is nothing if not curious.

They've been together enough time for Eames to know everything he needs to know about Arthur, which, all things considered, is not that much.

Eames knows the way Arthur likes his coffee, and his favourite dish. He knows where Arthur likes to get his expensive suits done, and also where he buys his plain clothes. He knows that Arthur has the most endearing case of bed hair in the mornings, and that he brushes his teeth before doing anything else at all, even opening his eyes completely.

Eames knows the taste and texture of Arthur's mouth, the exact temperature of his skin and the feel of the bullet scar on his right hip against his lips. He knows how Arthur sounds, desperate and breathless, when Eames is pounding inside of him, and the exact shade of his eyes when he's so turned on he's about to jump Eames. He knows how his spine bends when he's arching off the bed and how his body trembles when he comes.

But _this_ , this Eames doesn't know.

Not yet.

…

It starts like this: Arthur receives a phone call and leaves.

It's enough to make Eames curious about it. Not because Arthur leaves without saying anything, that's normal. It's the way Arthur's voice changes when taking the call, the way his eyes shift to check if Eames is paying attention.

And yes, he is.

Had Eames been a jealous person, he'd be suspecting Arthur's cheating on him. The mere thought of it makes Eames laugh, though. Arthur would never cheat, not on Eames or anyone else.

Arthur is as straightforward in his personal relationships as he is with everything in his life. He'd never resort to lying, at least when it's not for work, and he doesn't have the kind of imagination needed to live a double life.

Eames wouldn't be all that surprised if one day Arthur just says "I've met someone else; you can either move your things to the other room or get out by the end of the week."

It's not that Arthur is callous, is that he doesn’t have a reason to pretend. He neither has a reason to look for someone else while he has Eames.

He was, after all, the one who cornered him during their second job together and shot a straight ball with a "You know all your flirting and the tension you're bringing into the job? Stop it. You want to fuck? We'll hit the bar and then my room. But later, now we're working." And after that it had also been Arthur the one to say one morning "You've been staying here for the past month, stop pretending and move in with me. We're well past the time to call this a casual dalliance."

Arthur doesn't want complications in his personal life; he has more than enough of those at work.

And that is the reason Eames wants to know about the phone call.

…

It happens like this: Eames stalks Arthur; it's almost like a game.

Well, actually, it _is_ a game.

Eames knows Arthur has a secret. Arthur knows Eames knows he has a secret. He also knows enough about Eames to be perfectly aware it's not going to stay a secret forever.

The game is to see how long he manages to keep it up.

There are two kinds of secrets when it comes to Arthur: the ones he doesn't want to _tell_ Eames about, and the ones he actually doesn't want Eames to _know_.

The phone call is clearly of the former, if Arthur's look when he left the apartment is anything to go by. And Eames wouldn't be so insensitive as to pry about the latter.

He knows he can find out in several ways. He can ask Arthur, though it would be useless. If Arthur had wanted to tell him he would have done it without prompting. If Eames asks, Arthur will lie to his face and the game will be over in a second.

Eames can also try to extract the information from Arthur's subconscious, but that feels too much like work and is no fun at all. Also, Arthur would murder him. But not before letting his ultra-violent projections render him limb from limb in the dreamscape. Been there, done that, slept in the couch for a month. After getting shot. And stabbed. And beaten to death.

Trust Arthur to train his subconscious to be full of vicious psychopaths.

And that leaves plain, old fashioned, stalking. Or well, investigating.

The first attempt was five minutes after that first call and Arthur leaving the house to go God knows where. Eames went straight after him, found him down the street walking towards the East and then promptly lost him like an amateur.

Arthur's smug look when he arrived a few hours later was enough to tell Eames the game was on.

The next few attempts don't go much better, Arthur always managing to shake Eames off his trail within half an hour tops. Eames has also failed to uncover any information from Arthur's emails, phone logs or mail.

It is frustrating, to say the very least, six months down the line and Eames is no closer to finding out about Arthur's secret, but if he has to see Arthur's self-satisfied smirk one more time after losing him, Eames is going to do something drastic.

What he needs to do is outsmart Arthur, not an easy feat, but doable. There is no point following an Ex-CIA paranoid point man, that's the mistake Eames has made. He doesn't need Arthur to take him there, he needs to know where _there is_ and beat Arthur to the location.

So Eames does what he should have done from the beginning, he searches the house for the phone and clones the SIM card while Arthur is out shopping for some groceries, and then waits for the call. It takes five days for the phone to ring, and when it does, Eames berates himself for being so bloody thick and not doing this sooner. It's a landline, a bloody landline, and the exact location is in his hands less than a minute later.

Eames waits for Arthur to leave, slipping after him just a minute later. The trick is to _pretend_ to follow Arthur for a good five minutes, forcing Arthur to take detours and try to shake him off, and then go straight to the location and wait for him.

This time, the one with the superior smirk on his face is going to be Eames.

…

It is like this: The secret location is a huge colonial house with the biggest bloody garden Eames has ever seen, and he's British.

It's not that far from their apartment, surrounded by green and a tall fence Eames has no problem climbing. He's not sure what he's going to do once he's inside, but his curiosity has reached levels unheard of before, and he wants to know so badly he can almost taste it.

He wanders through the garden into the backyard, and blinks at what he finds there.

There is a pool, the water clean and sparkling under the sun. And a myriad of children swimming in it, jumping up and down around it under the watchful eyes of a couple of teenagers and an old lady.

Eames wonders for a second if he's in the wrong place, if Arthur outsmarted him again. Then the old lady turns to look at him and he _knows_.

She takes his appearance in with a long look, her mouth curling in a smile, and leaves the side of the teenagers to approach him.

"Eames, I'd say it's about time you arrived, my boy. I'm Martha, but feel free to call me Nana." She extends her hand and for a second Eames is too stunned to react, remembering his manners when she arches and eyebrow in a gesture so familiar, it kicks Eames brain into gear.

He takes the proffered hand and kisses it, turning his charm on to the maximum and smiling at her. "A pleasure, Nana, I'm sure." She laughs, her face lighting up with the gesture and taking at least ten years off her.

"Aren't you a charmer? I can tell what my boy sees in you."

And Eames can see exactly where Arthur got his looks from, and if he ages like Nana, he certainly wants to stick around for it. She looks young for her age, which Eames calculates to be around sixty-five or seventy, and has a figure women half her age would kill for. Nana has the same intelligent eyes as Arthur, though there are less frown lines on her face, and her smile is warm and open. She also dresses impeccably, the cut and fabric of her dress speaking about wealth and good taste.

"Arthur will be us shortly," she says, signalling to a table filled with refreshments, "Do you want something to drink in the meantime?"

"Tea, please," Eames says, following her.

"Go inside and change into something more appropriate, boy, while I get you a tea," Nana gestures and a butler, of all things, materializes by her side. "Please, take Eames to the changing room and give him his things."

There are a million questions fighting for dominance in his mind, but he follows the butler as instructed and changes into a pair of swimming trunks and a shirt that have clearly been bought for him. It must have been hard to find swimming trunks with pink and yellow pattern and a matching shirt.

When Eames comes out again Nana is sitting on the grass, a picnic blanket on the ground and three tall glasses of iced tea on a tray by her side. He's walking up to her when the door opens, Arthur walking into the backyard as if he owns the place. All things considered, he probably does.

"I lost him again, I'm beginning to think Eames is not that interested in--" Arthur stops mid-sentence, his eyes focusing on Eames' frozen figure and his lips curling into a smile. "You're going to be insufferable after this," he says, shaking his head before approaching Nana and leaning down to kiss her on the cheek.

"He beat you to the punch this time, Arthur," her voice is drowned by those of the children shouting Arthur's name at the same time.

The next few minutes are confusing and loud and Eames has never seen anything like it, never imagined Arthur to look so relaxed around a handful of wet and grabby kids. He notices Arthur is not wearing one of his expensive suits, which might account for it, but also he's smiling at them and patting them on the head and laughing.

Eames wonders what he has been missing for the months he has been unable to find this place.

"Don't you worry about that, Eames," Nana says as if she can read his mind. "The fact that you are here at all speaks volumes in itself. You won't miss anything else."

When Arthur joins them in the blanket he's also changed into swimming trunks, miles and miles of pale skin exposed for everyone to see. Eames drinks in the sight, forcing down the wave of arousal at it. This is neither the time nor the place.

"You didn't follow me this time," Arthur says sitting down next to Eames, close enough for him to feel the heat from his body but without actually touching him.

"Darling, even I would have caught on by now that stalking you is useless," Eames says, a self-depreciating smile on his lips. It just took him too fucking long to admit to that, his pride didn't allow him to give up sooner.

"So, what did you do, Mr. Eames?" Nana asks, interested. Arthur is also staring at him with the same intensity and Eames grabs the glass of tea just to drag the moment longer, enjoying the feel of their curiosity on him.

"I cloned his SIM card and then found the location from the landline number," he says after a while.

"This number is not listed." There is an approving smile on Nana's face.

"I have my resources," Eames says simply and Nana laughs.

"He's the best one you've brought here, Arthur."

"He's the _only one_ to make it here, you mean," Arthur counters before Eames has the chance to ask exactly how many of his lovers Arthur has taken before to meet Nana.

"Yes, that is very true. Which means you're special, Mr. Eames," she turns to him, her expression hard and serious. "So treat my boy well or you'll face _me._ You break his heart and I'll haunt your nightmares."

And that shouldn't be so terrifying coming from a septuagenarian lady, but somehow it is. There is something cold and unrelenting in her eyes, something that tells Eames that her looks wasn't the only thing Arthur inherited from her.

He loves her in that instant.

"You don't have to worry Nana," Arthur says, breaking the moment, and there is only the lovely lady full of smiles there, Eames too stunned to react. "He's special, after all."

And there it is again, Arthur's straightforwardness. Who needs grand love declarations when the plain and simple truth can do a better job?

The rest of the afternoon is a journey of discovery for Eames, seeing a part of Arthur he has never believed existed. He learns how Arthur was raised by Nana when his parents died, how Nana's husband had made his fortune with less than legal business and how she counts Eames being a thief as one of his good points.

Some things make more sense, from Arthur's wardrobe to his sense of humour. And the way he's with the kids, Nana's preferred charity. She doesn't give money because money has no meaning to her, she gives them time and a place to be kids for one day a week.

And that includes Arthur.

The afternoon is also a torture for Eames, loving every second of it and also counting them so they can be out of there. He loves Nana, and the house and the kids. And he wants to take Arthur inside, lick every single water drop sliding down his chest and divest him of his wet trunks, bury himself in the tight heat he knows so well.

At least he's not alone in the torture, he can tell by the way Arthur looks at him, eyes dark and burning, when Nana is not looking. The way he hungrily traces Eames's tattoos with his eyes and the flush on his face. He's not surprised that Arthur spends most of the afternoon in the cold water of the pool; Eames would as well if he knew he'd resist grabbing him and fucking him right then and there.

As it is, is safer to stay with Nana.

…

It ends like this: Eames on his back on the bed being fucked six ways to Sunday as a reward.

Arthur is all over him the moment they enter the apartment, not wasting any time slamming Eames against the door and trapping him there with his body. "Fuck Eames, I've never had so many dirty thoughts around children in my life," he growls against his mouth, his hands already teasing Eames' clothes from his body. "I feel like a bad influence for wanting to fuck you while I was playing with them."

Eames agrees with him, though he is unable to voice it, Arthur's tongue inside his mouth doing delightful things, sliding against Eames' and branding him, claiming him. They stumble into the bedroom blindly, Arthur pushing him on top of the mattress and climbing on top of his body.

Eames spreads his legs for him, grabbing the lube from the nightstand and spreading it quickly over Arthur's cock. Normally they'd go with a bit more foreplay and preparation, but not this time. The heated looks from the past few hours were more than enough foreplay, and Eames has been ready for _ages_.

Arthur must be feeling the same, pushing inside Eames slowly, his mouth planting biting kisses all over his face and neck until he is balls deep in Eames, his breathing shallow. When Arthur finally moves is all Eames can do not to arch clean off the bed, gripping the edge of the mattress tightly to anchor himself.

They move frantically, with no rhythm or coordination, and it's so bloody good Eames can't seem to catch his breath, a litany of obscenities and endearments falling from his lips in a constant stream, his entire body taut with need.

They come in what should be an embarrassing short time, Arthur slumping on top of him and kissing him deeply, almost desperately.

"Nana adored you," Arthur says, breathlessly, his head pillowed on Eames' shoulder and his hand tracing the tattoos on his abdomen. "And that's not something that happens regularly. _She has standards._ "

"She's bloody great," Eames agrees. He has wondered what Arthur's family would be like, and now that he knows, he feels privileged to be part of it. He knows the entire game was a test, and he doesn't care, he passed it with flying colours. "My mom is going to be over the moon with her." He makes a mental note to prepare a family reunion in the next few months.

Arthur laughs, amused. "Oh yes, _the Baroness._ "

This is going to be a family reunion to remember.

…


End file.
